interviews : daniel myer

You’d think with modern technology and all the wonders it brings to our table that making a phone call to Germany would be a fairly simple task. As I found out on the morning when I was scheduled to have an interview with Haujobb’s Daniel Myer this is not the case. At least not for me.

I could chalk it up to the fact that I’m a Luddite, still often bewildered by my DVD player’s remote control. Or I could blame my phone service provider, who continually reminded me at the time of the interview that my call could not be completed. Either scenario seems particularly embarrassing to me considering that this is Daniel Myer I’m trying to reach, the same guy who pioneered industrial/EBM in the early 90s. The same guy who opened the doors of perception with Solutions for a Small Planet, after which the electronic music scene would never be the same. In short, I am having technical problems trying to reach a guru of electronic music.

Currently Myer’s status is a bit up in the air; after announcing the dissolution of Haujobb in numerous scathing interviews geared loosely around the state of the music business, it looked like he was calling it a day. Focusing his attention on his side projects, Architect and Destroid, and his new status as a full-time member of Covenant, it seemed Haujobb would become a forgotten name in the annals of EBM/industrial fame. But with the recent re-release of Homes and Gardens (dubbed version “2.0” because of remastering and remixes), and internet rumors that Myer and co-conspirator Dejan Samardzic were at it again, we felt it was time to contact him and find out what, exactly, is going on.

by Paul Morin
photographs by Britta Hüning

Something I really admire about Haujobb is your ability and drive to reinvent yourself on each new album; you’re not content to just find a formula and stick to it unlike so much of the current EBM field. So how is Haujobb 2010 different from the past?

Daniel Myer : It’s funny, because when I think about it, it might have to do with our living situation. For the last 12 years or so I almost lived like a nomad, always on the run, never in the same place for very long. So every album ever since Solutions for a Small Planet was created with me and Dejan being apart for most of the time. This has changed now. Dejan moved to Leipzig last year. So we are in the same city and I am not traveling like crazy. I mean, I am still touring with other bands and for my production job I go from time to time to a different city. But now we can hang out again, you know. So I guess you can say that Haujobb 2010 is back where it all started, with me and Dejan being friends. We like to hang out, we like the same music, we like the same movies, etc… So it’s like a fresh start.

There seems to be some controversy surrounding the current state of the band. What is the band doing right now and what will you be doing in the near future?

DM : We stopped playing live with Haujobb because it was just not worth it anymore. We couldn’t afford to pay our guest musicians without losing money. So now we just try to get back to our old strength, I guess. We don’t want to push it, we take it slow. Dejan has his day job, and I still do my other projects. We are currently working on a compilation track for EAR [EAR Compilation, Old School Electrology Volume 1].